


Out of the Way

by ladygrange



Category: Led Zeppelin
Genre: .......anyway, ....i think it must mean something that love folds in this work, AND!, Anal Fingering, And oral sex, Beards (Facial Hair), Castles, Dirty Talk, F/M, Lots and lots of sex, Spit As Lube, and he's kneeling in a circle of standing stones asking for merlin, and love strings beyond time and a trick and entrapment, and merlin, and the sky wheels cloudy blue above arthur's head and his eyes close, arthur despairs at the coming battle, back to where you are now, countrysides, from that elsewhere says, love recalls presence, towards the end of boorman's excalibur, wishing desperately to have his counsel, your love brought me back’, ‘you brought me back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:41:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 8,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28031799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladygrange/pseuds/ladygrange
Summary: for HeartOfTheCountry, who is so lovely and generous with time and comments and makes me glad I post on ao3. I have so much fun looking through your bookmarks, and a fic based on PF’s The Wall actually led to an epic binge of listening to that album, so thank you! Truly nothing like that grand piano to prop up my mortal remains. Thank you for offering the chance to vent, and for reading me, would absolutely not be the same without you <33 I hope you’re doing okay, wherever you are, and that you don’t mind my gifting this work to you.
Relationships: Jimmy Page/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HeartOfTheCountry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeartOfTheCountry/gifts).



> for HeartOfTheCountry, who is so lovely and generous with time and comments and makes me glad I post on ao3. I have so much fun looking through your bookmarks, and a fic based on PF’s The Wall actually led to an epic binge of listening to that album, so thank you! Truly nothing like that grand piano to prop up my mortal remains. Thank you for offering the chance to vent, and for reading me, would absolutely not be the same without you <33 I hope you’re doing okay, wherever you are, and that you don’t mind my gifting this work to you.

_October 5, 1970 - Haverfordwest, Wales_

“It’s a cross-contamination,” Jimmy takes a bite of McVities digestives, thinking on his words. “Well, not contamination exactly. Fahey phrases the guitar like it’s never really been done, not with open tunings and traditional songs put together. Hard to do with only six strings.”

They’re on the A487, where the river Cleddau occasionally meets them in a wide, fleet current. Nearly there. She turns the wipers on while a light mist rolls over the car. 

“Go on,” she says, “I’m listening.”

“It’s brilliant, really.” Jimmy gestures with the hand not holding a chocolate biscuit. “Fingerpicking like that means every finger is at work to get the feel of the song.”

“The atmosphere,” she finishes.

“Exactly, darling.”

Around them, the moor rolls with its tufts of grass and fern and heather that turns purple but only when the sun hits it right; a few solitary trees stand bent, shaped sideways by the wind. 

She pulls off the narrow road to let a wide truck filled with farming equipment pass. Here, the road crumbles on the nonexistent shoulder. 

“He’s even got a label of his own, to support other artists like him.” A hint of wistfulness colors his voice. 

She gets back up to speed and smiles over at him. 

“Have you thought about getting in touch?” she asks. “Surely someone at Atlantic knows him. Ahmet knows just about everyone in music.”

“He’s a notorious recluse, Emma. Doesn’t put much stock in exposure or singles, none of that business.”

“Open with that when you ring him.”

Jimmy rolls his head against the headrest, his cheeks in a half brim above his beard, the brim of his fishing hat flipped up. 

“He might think I’m a total sellout.”

“Ah,” she flashes him a grin. “In that case, wait till you’re good and obscure. Should only take a few months.”

The sides of his eyes pleat together. His shirt has come untucked under an argyle vest. He’s shucked one clog to get more comfortable. She can’t deny the severe beauty of the drive any more than she can deny just how long they’ve been driving. She’s eager to stretch the stiffness from her legs. To stand in the open air. 

“Are you excited to see it?” he asks. 

“I am, yes.”

“I thought maybe…” Jimmy trails off. 

A large flock of sheep have the right of way, plump with wool and making a slow train across the lane. The bellwether pays the car no mind, leading twenty or so rams and ewes and lambs. The little ones keep close to their mothers. Besides the ring of the bell and a few bleats, they pass in silence. She rests her chin on the steering wheel.

“Wonder what it must be like.”

“What what must be like, my darling?”

“Being a shepherd.”

Jimmy takes another biscuit from the sleeve. Ponders. “Bit lonely, I imagine. Stressful as well, sheep aren’t really cut out to defend themselves.”

She hums, waiting for the last of the flock to clear the road. A young shepherd follows close behind; he ducks his cap in their direction. She shifts into first gear.

“Must be a lot of time to think.”

Now and again there are low, crumbling walls slowly merging into moss and fern. 

“Yes,” Jimmy says thoughtfully. “That profession would put you out of the way.”

The thought soothes her in a way she can’t quite pinpoint; something about open space and the antonym of frenetic. Something like weeks of doing work until she’d wanted to melt into the nearest piece of furniture that could hold her. 

“What were you thinking?” she asks. “Just a moment ago.”

“I was thinking it’ll be good,” he says, “to have the weekend free.”

The weekend, this one in particular, was built in the 13th century by an eccentric man. She worries distantly that it might not be in any condition to sleep in. 

“Take this one,” Jimmy points to the left. “Just there, darling.”

Then, past the gate, down the drive, against the clear blue sky, four levels tall, the castle tower juts up from an outcropping of rock. The shorter parts of the castle sprawl up on the slope to meet the tower. She pulls to the door, into a clearing surrounded by trees. An island of rocks. 

Jimmy nods to the front door. 

“The housekeeper left us keys. Come and explore with me?”


	2. Chapter 2

For all the ranginess of the castle, with windows in all shapes and sizes, the inside is simple in the way only ancient things can be. Uncluttered. 

The doorframes point sharply in the middle, the doors themselves two halves. She and Jimmy drift; she puts her hand against the stone wall as she walks, past deep-set windows and past the spare sitting room. He takes photographs, the shutter clicking with their steps. She walks past an old radio, with a green eye and two dials—one to regulate the volume, the other for finding a station.

The tapestry stops her: a hunt obviously, pale horses and men in extravagant clothing posed carefully and surrounded, almost lost in the background of greenery. She gets a bit lost too. The threads twist and turn from color to color - emeralds and dark browns and vermilion. Feathers in caps. 

Many had spun and woven and stitched the tapestry, surely many had, over time, repaired it when needed. Many times it must’ve been passed from one house and hand to another, crossed water and country and brushed past by busy children and hurried households, each head a universe. 

“What are you thinking, Emma?”

One corner of her mouth curls. She had not known he'd been standing so close. “Why do you ask?”

Jimmy points at his eyebrow with a knowing look. 

She passes her palm cautiously over the fabric, like she would water. 

“How old do you think this is?” she asks.

Jimmy pulls her against him, arms around her waist. 

“Dunno, might’ve been here when the castle was built. I hear they’re very good for insulating.”

She makes a soft sound of amusement. Submerged in the verdant plumes of foliage and the wisp of a horse’s tail. A sudden, unpleasant suspicion intrudes, suggesting that she might’ve left the tapes at Pangbourne, or the door unlocked. 

“Where’ve you gone?”

“Nowhere…” 

_Too_ placid, her word sounds forced even to her ears.

Jimmy releases her to half sit on the arm of a sofa with cushions covered in faded wildflowers and nods her over. 

“We’ll be back in time tomorrow, it’s really nothing but a formality that Atlantic wants, and Peter, too.” Jimmy smiles gently and links his arms around her waist. “Although it wouldn’t be so bad to skip one awards ceremony.”

She chews the inside of her cheeks and turns his words over. 

“There’s something else.” He pulls a loose bit of hair from her cheek and cups her chin in the vee of his thumb and forefinger. She has the sudden, nearly inexplicable urge to close her eyes and rest. “My tired one,” Jimmy says. “Worried about her job, that’s almost finished mind you, didn’t you mix everything down just like they asked?”

A rhetorical question if there ever was one; Jimmy teased her for weeks for muttering in her sleep over one LP, for one small group struggling in London. As though he wasn’t just as bad. She narrows her eyes at him, thinking and thinking, while soft eyes greet her along with the tuck of a smile in his bearded cheek. 

“One of us nearly toured themselves to delirium at the end of the decade and maybe he shouldn’t lecture me on worrying…”

Her eyelids flutter at his touch, picking gently at the bit of gunk still stuck in the tear duct until it’s clear. She keeps them closed for a minute. It shouldn’t matter, taking a weekend away, not one bit. The crush of work has settled into her joints and turned her shoulders into knots. She feels that she’s forgotten something. 

Jimmy takes hold of her face again, firm and molded. “Not lecturing, Emmaline. Only telling you you haven’t forgotten anything.”

She opens her eyes and slants her gaze down his sleeve, nibbling her cheek again. 

“You think I’m being foolish.”

“No, I only want you to be relaxed.” Jimmy draws her into the warmth of his open coat. He kisses in the wispy hairs at the back of her neck - her hair sits atop her head in a messy coil. “You haven’t broken anything, have you?”

Her smile curls against his shoulder, she’d hide there for ages if she could. 

“I only did that the once, in ‘66,” she murmurs, while Jimmy explores her neck with kisses. “You’re mean to bring it up now.”

“I remember you shaking terribly, in the back of the studio, thinking you’d destroyed a priceless microphone.” He tightens his holds around her––same as before, with his short hair and calling her Emmaline over the rush of fear that she’d not only embarrassed herself but she’d be dismissed from a job, and in front of everyone. Jimmy strokes her back. Another kiss to her neck. “Relax, my darling. Come and explore with me.”

Then, just as now, he waits until her shoulder blades have settled easy, and her lungs fill evenly. The knot loosens. 

“All better?” 

“Yes.” She pulls away and clears her throat. “Yes, I’m sorry.”

“Well, your outbursts _are_ unbearable, Emma.” Crinkles spread from his smiling eyes to his temples; she can’t help but match him. He tugs her away from the sofa. “Don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”

The stone steps to the second floor, worn in the center from countless soles, lead them to the second level of the tower. Golden fragments of sunlight flash through the window slits; they land on his shoulder and back, on the heel of each step. He looks back at her.

“Almost there.”

Cornflower blue sheets and an eiderdown duvet cover a dark wood bed, polished to a high sheen. Wear shows in the scuff marks and lines, wood wrinkled and grooved. 

“This is for us?” 

“It is,” he says, pointing to a distinct window, one with many circles around the middle one, warped the way glass sometimes can, and set above an arched doorway and overlooking the view. “The bath’s in there.”

She sits on the featherbed. A smile touches her lips. 

“Do you like it?”

Jimmy steps between her knees, she rests her forehead in his belly, and her yes, very much in the soft cotton of his vest. He cups the back of her head.

“I’m glad.”

She likes that his shirt has come loose enough to kiss below his belly button. She likes the neat curve of his backside in her palms, big back pockets in his bell bottoms. She likes, most of all, when she gazes up to find him watching her in the specific language of their want. She stands. 


	3. Chapter 3

She kisses the outside corner of his eye, the apple of his cheek, then his plush mouth red in all that inky hair. Jimmy cups her cheeks and takes, tastes, with voluptuous leisure. He swipes his thumbs across her flush, forms his fingers around her head, and keeps her face upturned, to plie her with the rasp of his beard and the rhythm of his tongue––all softness and heat and just below, urgency. Desire pools in her belly at the intimate taste of him and of her and a third thing she can’t think of just now. They are out of breath. Jimmy nuzzles her face. 

“Let me.” 

She nods. Jimmy finds her collarbones with his mouth, and the fluttering base of her throat with an openmouthed lick. He makes a thoroughly masculine sound of satisfaction at the puckered velvet of her nipples, catching and rolling them in his fingers. Her mind blanks for a moment when takes one nipple between his teeth and bites tenderly. 

“Jimmy.” 

She reaches for his zipper. She gets his clothes out of the way with kisses in the tufts of dark hair on his chest, and savors the quick intake of his breath when she licks his nipple. Such a sensitive place, enough to make his erection jump impatiently in her hand. She measures the silky hardness in slow strokes and attends to his other nipple. Gives as he gave. 

When she presses her thumb into the tiny opening at the tip until a pearly drop emerges. When he makes a helpless sound in the back of his throat, she does it again. Her blood thrills to him, and she kneels, breasts bare, in the lavender pool of her skirt to taste the plump head of his cock––salt and pink skin and the heat emanating from his body. Jimmy cradles her head with a shocked expression, breathing hard through his mouth while he guides her.

“Emmaline,” he groans. He has to lean against the side table to keep upright. 

She wants to tell him how extraordinarily _hard_ he gets; the crown thick with seed. But her mouth is full, and instead, she dances circles with her tongue until Jimmy bucks helplessly. She can’t help but cup below, to skin drawn tight; she rolls the weight of him in her palm.

Jimmy stutters her name in that warning way. She forms her tongue to the underside of his cock, a lovely tangle and pulse of veins, and nudges her fingers down between his legs. She starves for the groans breaking from his chest, for his cheeks brilliant above his beard, for that soft, clenched part of him that makes his voice break. 

Jimmy wrenches her back. She looks up at him, panting and slick between her thighs. Starved. Wordlessly, the head of his cock sucked to a plummy, throbbing thing, Jimmy pulls her up and leads her a few steps to the bed. 

“Jimmy, I -” Her heart kicks at his expression

“On your front, Emma.”

She goes. Her skirt bunches at her waist, Jimmy pries her underwear away. She squeaks at his sharp bite against her raised bottom. A retaliation. Two long licks soothe the mark. Blindly, she grasps behind her for his face, and meets only the crushed velvet of his beard and a fleeting kiss to her fingers. 

Jimmy takes her wrists in one big hand and sheathes himself so deep she whines. Her cheek slides in the covers. She hears a soft wet sound and knows Jimmy's sucking on his fingers. It makes her shudder in anticipation and her sex squeeze him from end to end. He makes a tease with the first finger in her ass, working her open so slowly she pushes back. It only sends his cock deeper. 

“Stop that,” he warns roughly. 

She _can’t_. Not when she can feel his gaze. And not when he gives her another long finger, making her tighten and moan, lips open and messy on the covers. Open to whatever he wants to do. He stretches those slick, heavy muscles as if he had an abundance of time, as if she can’t feel the twitch of his cock inside her, making her squirm. With two fingers buried, the rest curled, Jimmy tightens his hold on her wrists.

“I told you to stop, Emmaline.”

She makes a ragged sound, something like his name. Something like an orgasm just out of reach. She forces herself to relax, to make her back soft, to rest her cheek and let him hold her this way. Jimmy pushes his hips in.

“Good girl.”

He uses his leverage to keep her immobile, and he uses his fingers to press against the thin wall of flesh separating his cock. She keens. Her toes clutch at nothing. If he’d just stop the hard rhythm of his thrusts, she’d be ready for the quick rapture. If he wasn’t raking that pleasure spot inside, she’d not tense too hard and stiffen and cry out so loud. 

She finds him laid along her back. He's withdrawn his fingers and let her wrists free. Jimmy drags his nose along the slick curve of her neck. 

“I wanted to be inside you, darling,” he chides tenderly, thrusting lazily. 

Jimmy reaches under her body to stroke her neglected clitoris and coats the hard little bundle with his seed. She twitches against him.

“You were,” she manages. 

Jimmy nibbles at her shoulder and continues the act, half-hard inside her and knowing she’s too sensitive.

“Mmm, you wanted me to spill in your throat, darling?” he asks lightly. 

She nods, caught in the tremble of another orgasm. Her clit jumps under his wet fingers. She whimpers and gives in to his voice narrating at her ear; her, sucking until he’s given her a mouthful of his seed. His darling one. Her cry is sharp in the quiet room, her cheek turned scarlet on the covers and every muscle locked while Jimmy coaxes spasms from her. 

“Emmaline,” his voice is full of content, he nuzzles his beard against her shoulder blade. He rolls her over gently. “Stay here, my darling.”

Calves dangling off the bed, she has the peculiar sense of being far from home and also relaxed. 

A shutter whirs and clicks. 

She raises her brows, eyes still closed. “You’re going to run out of film, Jimmy.”

She can hear his smile. “I packed more in the car.”

Her laugh comes up from her belly. She sketches him out, standing in that way of his, his hips a smooth curve cocked to the side, a mix of sharp hip bones and soft belly, chest and neck tinted pink, disappearing into his beard. She smiles to herself and thinks of kissing all of him with a sweet ache in her body. She props on her elbows.

And there he is––flushed, sex wet from them both. She makes a low hum of content.

“Are you ogling me, Emma?”

She bounces her foot gently. “Maybe.” 

The shutter clicks again. “And have you come to any conclusions?” 

He cradles the lens with such grace and looks as he does when deep in study or thought - lips parted and gaze concentrated. Jimmy lowers the camera at her continued silence, looking expectant. 

“Hand me that, please.”

Camera in hand, she focuses, pauses, and brings the lens down a tad to say quite seriously, “You look very nice today, my darling.” 

An easy grin emerges. “Thank you, darling.”

The shutter clicks. Jimmy picks her ankle up and tugs playfully. 

“Come outside with me.”


	4. Chapter 4

There’s not much of a garden save foxglove and roses ringing the foundation rocks, they resemble a thicket now, hopelessly tangled and in need of a trim. Remnants of wisteria grow half-heartedly up parts of the castle. A path cuts from the clearing to woodland, where oak and alder trees have caught fire in the leaves - some a brilliant red, others orange. Wild damsons grow pear shaped, like overgrown blueberries, She steps over gatherings of elderflowers. Deep into loveliness. 

Jimmy finds a spot to crouch for more pictures while she wanders around the trees. Sometimes, one or the other will point out a particular, something that catches their eye. Ruffled clouds come slowly into the sky. The breeze tells her a rain shower might arrive soon. Jimmy’s kept his hat on, his herringbone coat flutters in the grass while he pets a tabby cat. 

“What’ve you got?” she asks, coming behind him. 

“Still a bit of a kitten,” Jimmy says. “I wonder if she lives around here.”

Emma takes the camera from his hands, framing him in the lens. “Has she told you otherwise?”

He smiles up at her. The cat kneads Jimmy's hand to redirect his attention. Jimmy gives chin scratches. He looks at Emma with an uncertain set to his mouth. 

“You think they're okay?”

She kneels beside him and nods. “I think so. Basil is very independent and Humphrey’s likely flopped in the bedroom windowsill like he usually is.”

He mulls this over, and the cat takes burrows more firmly into his jacket sleeve. 

“I worry about them sometimes,” Jimmy says, giving a scratch behind the ears. He crinkles when the cat turns to butter. “Especially when we're gone.”

“The cats are perfectly fine, Jim." She kisses his temple. “But they might be a bit jealous of this one.”

“She's rather affectionate,” he murmurs. 

He walks his fingers along faint, black stripes, leading to a game of catch the fingers. Jimmy's quick enough not to get scratched, although practice serves him well; he nearly tires the cat out with a few tries.

She hums. “I think it's you, cats just take to you.”

He looks up at her. “You fancy getting another one?”

“I don't,” she laughs. “Let Basil and Humphrey adjust to Plumpton before they have another cat to contend with.”

She'll never know how Jimmy moves like that - calm and anchored, one lithe move from kneeling to walking. The cat stretches and goes on its way

She returns his camera and walks to the side of the castle with him, up and over the slope. Some windows are nearly buried in the lower levels. Jimmy stops, waits for the right angle. Documenting. He tells her it’s for sale, that the original builder feared a specific death by snake and, according to legend, ended up dying via snake bite. He tells her, snaps pictures, watches her while she walks. Eventually, Jimmy offers lunch. 

“No snakes,” he says, camera hanging around his neck. “I promise.”


	5. Chapter 5

“You arranged all this?” Emma opens another cupboard to find a glass to share between them.

Jimmy pauses between bites. “You sound surprised, darling.”

She slides beside him, onto the bench, to a plate of crisps and thick slices of sourdough with their crusty edges and generous heaps of roast beef. She plucks a pickle out of the jar and swipes a bit of mustard at the edge of his mouth. 

“I just… when did you have the time to plan?”

He waggles his brows. “I have ways.”

“Right.” She grins. “Arcane grocery shopping.”

Jimmy takes the pickle she offers. “We had fuck all at the cottage, besides a few basics, and I figured you’d want a bit more than a can of beans on toast.”

“Do you plan to go back?” She had not realized how hungry she was. “For the next one?”

Jimmy shrugs. “Maybe, there might be another place, out in the country of course. I’ve come to the end of my tether on doing it all in the studio, it just stifles everything.”

The kitchen is much larger than she’d imagined; a blend of wood and stone and reddish brown refrigerator that creaks on its hinges. Nothing like Bron-yr-aur at all with plumbing and electricity, yet still rooted some time long past. It comes to her then, at the end of their lunching, what he meant.

“An amalgam.”

Jimmy lowers his glass, bemused. “What?”

“What you meant,” she offers, cheek on fist. “In the car about John Fahey, not a cross-contamination. An amalgam.”

He thinks about it. “A mixture, sort of… primitive and modern at once.”

“Mm.”

Strange, she thinks, that it’s noon, and he’s done with a gruelling six weeks of America, done with the third LP, that it should be released today and they’re in Wales. She hasn’t got to work in the morning. Of course, there’s still plenty to do; settling the house in Plumpton, settling Pangbourne, settling themselves. She remembers a quick call from him, before his flight out of New York City, jittery in the voice, worn out, mostly proud and relieved. She watches while he takes their plates away. Jimmy looks over his shoulder, sensing.

“Alright, darling?”

“I,” she tries to catch her thoughts in a sieve. She settles on, “Dunno, it feels like we aren’t quite here or there.”

Jimmy comes back and takes her face, tilting her to look at him. “We can go home if you like, Emmaline.”

She shakes her head in the grip of his big hands. “I want…”

She closes her eyes and admits she does not know. Not knowing the want only strengthens the general feeling. She wishes she could grab hold of what she means. 

“Tell me,” Jimmy prompts gently. 

She opens her eyes to decipher the button of his jeans, and finds want uncurling in her belly. Her ears grow hot. Surely he feels them. Suddenly, Jimmy releases her.

“Come with me, Emmaline.” He takes her hands instead and nods to the door. “Come upstairs with me.”


	6. Chapter 6

She tries to catch his tongue, to arc her body to his and keep him there. Jimmy smiles into the kiss and denies her, teasing her with soft, quick kisses. Each descent only makes her more impatient for the next. Want dips and fizzes in her limbs - she loses her fingers in thick, dark hair and tugs him deeper into her mouth. 

Jimmy sits at the edge of the bed, feet planted firmly on the wooden planks, one fist around his blushed pink erection as if to calm it, watching as she takes her hair down. His chest rises and falls quickly. 

“Come here, my darling.”

The room is just chilly enough that the contact with his hand makes her want to bury her body next to his. She does not hesitate to wrap her legs around his waist or to angle her hips just so, for a luscious descent. The stretch makes her whimper. She does it again. Her hair washes and shivers over his knees with the movement.

“Emma.” He takes hold of her sides, to halt the swell of her hips. “Darling, you’ll be too sore if you keep doing that.”

She shakes her head, wanting too badly to reach the delicious edge of her pleasure. 

“Yes,” Jimmy says, brushing his nose against hers. “I can feel you clenching around me. Slow down.”

Her heart thuds, and she grasps his hair.

“You didn’t want slow before.”

“Mmm.” His gaze slides down her body, to where they just barely join. “That was different.”

“Different…” Her mind won’t take hold of the words. His fingers make second ribs over her sides. She _aches_.

Jimmy doesn’t let her budge an inch. “You’re going to breathe with me, darling.”

At her nonplussed look, he adds,

“To make you feel it.”

She swallows thickly and nods. Jimmy ducks his head to suckle at her nipple; his lips slide over her skin effortlessly, his beard makes the undersides rosy. How she can breathe with her heart thudding like that, she doesn’t know. Hardly anything makes proper sense when he’s got her suspended in his hands. Jimmy leaves each one stiff and wet from his mouth. She doesn’t know whether to tug him away or trap him closer. He presses a kiss in the center of her chest and then meets her with soft eyes––a boundless gaze. 

“Take a breath, Emmaline.”

He does the first one with her, bellyfuls of air, rooted so deep she feels it in her toes. Jimmy lets her descend in slow inches, hard in supple, yielding flesh. The second breath, another expansion; she knows his hands still support her, his thighs hold her bottom, his waist makes space between her legs. These are the anchoring things, she’d dissolve if his body wasn’t there, notched perfectly against her own. Jimmy’s telling her to take another, while bringing her down so flush and full her fingers twitch in his hair. Her mouth opens for more. Another one. 

He doesn’t let her eyes go, but holds her there, with a gaze that swallows her whole and delivers her to him split open and achingly vulnerable. She is impossibly full. 

Jimmy removes one hand to thumb the nipple he’d sucked, to test its sensitivity and the resulting jolt of her hips. She fights the urge to collapse into him, to let her head loll and let her muscles carry the sensation to its end. 

“Breathe, Emma,” he reminds her. 

Her lungs expand. Never has she been so aware of her diaphragm. Or how he meets her with every single one. 

Jimmy leaves her nipple to trace the quivering, soft inside of her thigh. He makes an appreciative sound in his chest.

“Emmaline, you’re so sensitive here.” He moans softly at her inner clutch. He brushes his forefinger at the private valley where her inner thigh meets her labia. “Where I’ve licked you.”

The curls hiding her sex are wispy and damp––he takes pleasure in touching lightly, distinguishing her texture, her shiver, and puffy folds beneath, shining and swollen. 

“And bitten you,” he says. Close, so very close to her clit, hard and peeking out where they connect. Jimmy makes one tight circle around her clit. “Where I've loved you.”

He bounces into her. Just a little. Just enough. Almost too much when they’ve been so still for so long. Her breathing breaks and she buries her face in his beard. Her calves tremble around his back, her toes dig and disappear into blue cotton. Under long, slow spasms, she sobs his name. 

Jimmy groans in answer and clutches her hard against his flexing belly. Warm seed fills her; she feels each heavy throb of his pulse inside her, flush to her womb. Thick like words that take room in her chest and heavy breaths in her throat. What’s said in the body, lined with knowing. She nuzzles his beard and finds her cheeks salt-washed and tender. 

Jimmy cups her bottom and says her name. Penetrated this way, her muscles refuse to let him go. 

“Emmaline.” His nose burrows against the hair stuck to her temples. He brushes it aside and licks away the tears oozing out. “ _Emmaline_.”

He holds her name in his mouth in a lush sort of way. His tongue takes the slow flood. And Jimmy rocks them at the edge of this bed, cradling her loose and unravelled body. She turns her head to search for the comfort of his kiss. Jimmy meets her, catches her mouth with his, and she tastes herself. He grazes the backs of his fingers across her cheek and pulls away to get a good look at her. 

“Emma,” he murmurs. 

Little things inside her have burst. Jimmy lets them fall in a controlled bounce to their sides, moves her hair out of the way, and covers the exposed side of face with his hand. 

“My darling,” he says gently. “Everything's okay. Take a breath.”

She feels full and ripe and easily bruised as a result. Jimmy clasps the back of her neck and squeezes to relieve the little cramp in her muscles. She breathes. His smile is slow to take over. Some smile to wake again and again without worry.

A calm spills from his gaze to the small of her bones. She had not known how much she needed it - pleasure and release. Tears and holding. The long fingers still splayed across her bottom. The necessary, visceral presence after it all. Jimmy gives the corner of her eye a last little lick.

He has heavy-lidded eyes, and a drowsy voice. “A nap.” 

She nods again, curling into her sleep and the softness of his body. They’re the wrong way. Laying across the bed like this, she realizes dimly. Jimmy drags the covers over them, nose to nose. She naps.


	7. Chapter 7

“No, _no_ , it says softly,” she admonishes with a grin. “Like a whisper.”

Jimmy raises his brows. “Do you want me to read it or not, darling?”

She suppresses a giggle and nods. His socked feet rest in her lap, sweater unbuttoned, both of them deep in the comfort of an old sofa and two bottles into a beer with an incomprehensible name. The fire crackles before them; his clogs rest beside her trainers.

“Alright.” He clears his throat and takes a fortifying sip of stout. “‘To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.’” Jimmy looks at her with his brows knit, “Am I saying any of this right?”

“Let me see.” She leans over and scans the page. She hums. “We can’t be certain Thomas wasn’t drunk when he wrote this. According to the footnote, Llareggub is bugger all spelled backwards.”

A laugh makes his belly jump. She takes the bottle from his hand and assumes her position, nestled at the crook of the sofa, book in hand, open to where he left off.

“Was I not doing a good job?” Jimmy looks mildly offended. He pokes his toes into her belly.

“You were doing wonderfully,” she says. “I just want to finish this last bit.”

His eyes pleat with a crinkly smile. “Go on, then.”

She takes a hearty swallow. “‘The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, and the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in the widows’ weeds.” She pauses for effect. “And all the people of the lulled and dumbfounded town are sleeping now.’”

“And we get to hear their dreams,” Jimmy muses. 

“Mmm, some of them more pure than others.” She scans down. “‘… you alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-beforedawn minutely dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea.’”

“Sounds like a prophecy almost,” Jimmy says, skimming his fingers over her hair, loose and down amongst his blue jeans. He tugs the ends. “Does it make you want to move to Wales?”

“Gosh, no,” her lips curl. She sets the book and empty glass down and follows where his hands lead, resting on top of him, rising with his breathing. She speaks mostly into his neck, scratchy-soft with his beard. “I like where we live now.”

“Will you like Plumpton?” He combs her hair back with his words. “I want you to, you know, it’s not like the old house…”

She stirs her fingers in the swirl of chest hair peeking from his shirt. Placing a kiss there, she says,

“It...is a bit out of the way,” she says, a smile in her voice. “But I adore the windows.”

“As much as Pangbourne?”

“Mmm,” she nibbles kisses to his ear and says, “Just as much as Pangbourne.”

“Emmaline.”

Jimmy takes her face in his hands and meets her beer flushed cheeks. Her mouth tugged red.

“Yes,” she says.

“I want you to like it.”

The unadorned sincerity in his voice startles her, and she draws her fingertip along the downward slope of his mustache, down where it disappears into more black hair. 

“I do,” she says. Soft, bowed lips part under her touch. She smiles gently. “And I like you a bit too much, which is all there is to it, really.”

His cheeks rise, he kisses her wandering finger. 

“A bit too much, you say?” Jimmy asks, sucking briefly on her finger, letting her feel the wet curl of his tongue.

“Mm hm.” She removes her finger and sits up. Astride him. Astride a distinct ridge of hardness that she can’t help but wriggle against. “Come and have dinner with me, you insatiable man.”

He pouts, nudges his hips. “You won’t…”

She points to the sleeping black curl near the fire. “Not in front of Captain Cat, I won’t.”

Jimmy props himself up on his palms to kiss her. “Have a bath with me after, hm?”


	8. Chapter 8

“I wonder if they’ll understand it.”

Jimmy talks while he cracks another egg into a bowl of flour and milk. 

“It’s different, you know that,” he pauses to fish out a piece of shell. 

She continues with slicing onions into half moons. They go into a hot pan until deeply caramelized and nearly melting. Jimmys takes up a whisk. They’ve discovered the kitchen to be the warmest part of the castle. She wonders if they could sleep down here, next to the AGA range. 

“I know,” she turns to him, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “Anybody who’s paying attention knows you aren’t the type of group to stay in one song, let alone a whole LP.”

Jimmy smiles self-consciously. “Sometimes it's hard not to grab the tapes back and tinker.”

They switch places, him to finish the gravy, her to pour the thin batter into a dish and place sausages one by one inside. She likes this pudding for the dramatic puff once baked, the resulting crunch and soft interior. Something good to go with October. She turns the dial of a timer. 

“Have you had anything come to you?” she asks.

Jimmy leans against the counter, “Been thinking of graffiti.” 

“What about it?”

He scratches his beard, mouth twisted in a thought. “What if recording was like a physical reaction to it? To graffiti, I mean. I want to take clues from that process.”

“Yes,” she takes a seat at the table while dinner finishes. Jimmy fiddles absently with her hand, finding lines in her palm like a reader. “Mixing in the booth is both easy and hard.”

“But it’s still going on the tape, even the bits that don’t make the cut. Physically, it’s on the tape.”

She presses her hand against his, “The tape is a building face.”

“And the music, the recording itself, is the writing.” Jimmy looks at her intently. She senses a few dozen thoughts forming behind that gaze and grins at him. His excitement has always been infectious. She can’t remember not wanting to hear more. 

“I don’t know exactly, maybe not for this next one. But…” He shrugs. “The more I see graffiti, the more I think about it.”

The timer goes off. She leans in for a kiss. “Think about it some more, then.”


	9. Chapter 9

Steam curls from the claw-footed roll-top tub and above a latticed window showing an indigo sky––the time and color of evening when the trees turn black. A weightless moon shines full and floating. 

His cheeks are heat-flushed and his beard drips. She makes a rich lather from a block of soap until suds run over knuckles and Jimmy melts against her massaging hands. The weight of the water lengthens his hair. She leans him against her arm to rinse out the soap - his hair dark and glossy. Fragrant with citrus. For long minutes, she runs her fingers through it, watching his eyes sink closed, light in the water. Slowly, carefully, she spreads more soap over his chest and belly, offering a kiss every now and again to his shoulder. Palmfuls of water wash him clean and warm. 

They rest. Jimmy’s head lolls on her breast, she scratches gently in his beard. 

“Emma.”

Quiet as steam, he brings her from the edges of a calm sleep. She rests her cheek atop his head.

“Hm?”

He presses his mouth to the softness between her breasts. 

“Now you.”

Jimmy washes her all over. Picks her legs from the water to kiss at the indent of each ankle and kiss under her knees. He’s unhurried with her hair, hands forming and forming over her head, at the back of her neck. She’s boneless from those kneading hands. Could sleep and sleep. 

He rubs circles into her hair then takes her against his arm, fully reclined, to wash the soap away. 

When he finishes, Jimmy looks down at her with an almost unbearable tenderness. She feels the rope of her wet hair hanging in the bathwater, the total length of her body laid with his, the smoothness of porcelain against her heels––all of her open. She feels unaccountably _seen_. As if, between the rituals of dinner and bath, she’d forgotten herself. Forgotten, and then reminded, held up across his torso by a strange and soft gaze. Heart thudding, she turns her face into the crease of his arm.

“Emmaline.” 

Jimmy kisses her temple. She shuts her eyes and swallows.

“Feels like a long time since we’ve done this,” he murmurs. “Just been in the bath together. I remember the first time we did. Have I ever told you that? After the Norway gigs, I was knackered, and you just bathed me and washed my hair for about five minutes.” His smile curves at the top of her head. “I wanted to fall asleep like that, you know.”

She shakes her head. “I didn’t know that.” 

“Mm, and then you left once I got in bed and I must’ve been mad, waking up and thinking I’d dreamed a woman had been in the bath with me, but there was no trace of her afterward.”

She tilts her head up to find pleated eyes, his cheeks in rounds. Jimmy cups the side of her face. 

“You still think of that?” she asks, voice hushed and a sweet pang in her chest.

Jimmy nods. “I still think of that.”


	10. Chapter 10

She’s made a small bubble of warmth in the covers and beckons Jimmy over while he banks the fire and arranges a wrought iron screen in front. He’s determined it should last all night. 

“Come _here_ , Jimmy.” 

He lays his robe across a stuffed chair and climbs in with her. She snuggles into the inviting depths of her pillow. 

“It’s so cold in here my nipples hurt.”

Jimmy grins and kisses her cheek. “Mine, too.”

He covers them both completely, heads too. Under humid darkness, she says,

“I was thinking we might take a walk tomorrow.”

“Mmm.”

Jimmy scoots lower, to her leg. 

“Jim.” She reaches for the back of his head. “What are you doing?”

A curious mouth searches along her thigh. He makes one long lick on that pale, fragile skin. 

“Seeing to a few things.”

He glides his thumb in the plump crease, not opening, just following the natural curve. Molten pleasure fills her belly. 

A puff of air leaves her. “Oh, that.”

“Yes.” Jimmy presses back the hood protecting her clitoris and takes a taste. 

She palms his hair. She’s wet from the bath and from his insistent kisses; openmouthed ones, eating wetly with a sound as if he’s bitten into something especially sweet or succulent. 

Jimmy knows when to sidle her legs over his shoulders, when to fuck her with curling fingers and deliberately rub his bearded cheeks into the fleshy parts of her thighs. 

Her back bows in a hungry arch. Jimmy groans into her body, sucking and sucking. _Relentless._ She makes a jagged sound from the force of her orgasm. He tends to her clit with adoring strokes, letting her twitch and subside. 

Her bones have dissolved so Jimmy need only roll her under him, rest her thighs high on his waist, and take her in one liquid glide. Belly to belly. 

He tilts his head a fraction to kiss and suckle at her nipple. She holds him, lips parted, while he sucks ravenously, pumping into the soft, swollen flesh between her thighs. Tender place. 

She whimpers and strokes his sweat damp back. Cradles him between her thighs. And when he stiffens, trying to stave off his orgasm, she threads her fingers through his hair and pulls him to her mouth. 

“Jim,” she coos in his ear. “My darling one.”

How fiercely she _wants_ him––his orgasm sharply defined on his face, like he’s on the verge of tears. Like he’s overcome. He buries a harsh, wild sound into her neck. She welcomes him with an answering hum. 

She pets his hair, keeps her legs wrapped around him.A few logs break in the fire with a distinct hiss. Jimmy leaves a few soft kisses to her nipple. Her lids are so heavy, every muscle protean and sleep just there, beyond the press of his body into hers and the remnants of her orgasm. 

They fall asleep like that, bent together like the trees. 


	11. Chapter 11

“Tell me something.”

She perches her cheek on the mushed edge of her pillow. The fire holds the room in a barely perceptible glow, and the eiderdown keeps heat between them, up to their chins. Her knees mingle with his. 

“Like what?” she whispers back. 

Jimmy runs the backs of his fingers up and down her spine. “Anything.”

“Hmm.” She sifts through the raspy soft hair on his cheek and jaw, considering. “I never know what to do with my arms when I sleep.”

His laughter makes the mattress shiver in a silent ripple. She thumbs his bearded chin. Night wheels slowly around them.

“It’s true,” she says. “I can never get them just right. They’ll fall asleep and then my fingers get all tingly. Sometimes I fancy taking them off, just for a bit, to get them out of the way.”

“You might keep them nearby, just in case,” he suggests. 

She hums, musing. “I might have a bit of trouble getting them back on in the morning.”

Jimmy straightens his expression into a serious nod. “Only a bit of trouble.”

“Yes,” she agrees solemnly, pausing for a yawn. “Suppose I’d have to get some help.”

His mouth stretches in an answering yawn. “Well, I’d help you with that, darling.”

She raises her brows, smiling. “You’d help me get my arms back on?”

Another set of crinkles greet her, along with his grip under her waist, pulling her closer, into the utter radiance of that smile. 

“Yes, Emmaline,” he says, nuzzling a kiss to the round of her shoulder. “Yes, I’d help you get your arms back on.”


	12. Chapter 12

Light burns off the early morning fog and falls through the window to a table littered with empty butter wrappings and a dusting of flour, and her hands working quickly in a deep bowl. Wood burns the last of her sleep away; she’s glad, with all the modern fixtures, that someone thought to preserve the hearth. No kitchen she’s ever known so clearly shows the centuries, has wood softened and worn - stone, too. Things built to last but no less adaptable for the cat sleeping in a hallway window just big enough for its body, or the central heating and the decidedly new electric kettle waiting on the counter. Carefully marked heights, carved into the kitchen door, compete in varying levels with initials scrawled beside each line. 

She forms a loose, butter-speckled dough on the table and wonders who those children were, and if they’d sat at this table, on the long bench, and eaten the same breakfast she’s making. The rhythm of forming and placing, of her thoughts drifting in and out, distracts and soothes her in the way only open-ended days can. Days with something to do, some place to be, but only much later. Ones that stretch leisurely and curl into tiny windows and make scones as big as both her fists put together. 

She lets out a wobbly laugh of surprise when a pair of arms twine around her waist. He is warm, the sleeves of his plaid robe have frayed at the ends from years of wear.

“Emma,” he says in her neck. “Why are you up so early?”

“I had to see to a few things.”

He rests his chin on her shoulder and watches her roll the dough in smooth, even motions. He watches her cut them into large triangles. He doesn’t let her loose when she picks up the baking sheet.

“Jimmy, I have to get to the oven.” 

He merely cups her breast, shaping her, letting her nipple harden in his palm. A frisson of desire travels the length of her body. 

“Aren’t you hungry?”

He presses undeniable hardness into her back. She twists around, lips curling, to meet a bearded face with well-rested eyes. 

“You don’t want coffee, or tea?” 

Jimmy scatters kisses along the wide neckline of her shift. He tastes the fine skin below her ear, finding where she instinctively backs into him, to the hug of his body. He could easily take her like this, she realizes, with only a few adjustments, with the both of them only marginally dressed. 

Her bottom lip slides through her teeth at his slow, hot touch on her thigh. Lingering tenderness from the day before makes her especially sensitive. As if every nerve were waiting for him to come into the kitchen and part the lips of her sex and find her clit. 

She wants to reach for him, but her hands are shaggy with bits of flour and sugar and double cream. His beard rasps down her jaw and neck. Sweet, electric honey replaces her blood - sings for his touch. 

“Emma,” he sighs her name. Penetrates her with two lazy fingers. 

Jimmy tucks her close, wedging his erection between her legs. 

He guides her knee to rest on the bench and gives her a sawing, blunt rhythm. How delicious it is, bent over, palms flat on the table, breasts swaying, and his body a mirror to her own. Mostly clothed and fully penetrated. Small slick, slick noises accompany his thrusts. 

Jimmy teases her clit with the pad of his thumb; pleasure soaked sounds catch in her throat. 

She moves with him, pushed forward and rocked back, stretched and then not. Delight coils in her belly. Her head drops and his mouth opens at the bend of her neck to bite down; teeth and beard and lips, all so good. As good as his swirling touch between her thighs. She stiffens at her peak. 

Jimmy searches for the little mouth of her womb, and when he finds it, gasps against her shoulder. His final thrusts are milky with semen. He rubs his moans into the pale cotton of her shift and the damp skin just beneath. 

And for a while, she’s consumed in the sense of his weight, his fullness behind her, and how those little things which had burst inside reform and rush strong in her blood. Jimmy breathes into her. Time roars off, they stay still. Silent. Listening to each other. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve wanted to write about John Fahey since I wrote Led Astray, over two years ago, but every time I tried to fit him in it felt forced or awkward. So, I figured here, I’d jump right in without preamble. Fahey was an oddball on purpose, didn’t care for fame or recognition, and died in obscurity, almost broke. My favorite performance is on the Rockpalast program in 1978, Wine and Roses especially. 
> 
> There have been passing references that JP and RP were into Fahey, especially during III times, and Poor Tom is quite Faheyesque. Given how much JP likes folk and traditional music, I think he’d admire such an incredible fingerstyle guitarist. One of my favorite moments of JP’s fingerpicking happens at the end of The Rain Song in TSRTS, his eyes are closed, and he’s using a pick at first, but casually tosses it away and segues right into the outro of the song. It looks unthinking but requires so much skill. 
> 
> JP spoke about the idea behind Physical Graffiti to Rolling Stone in 2015. I have a sense that he must’ve given it a lot of thought over time, so I stuck it here because I couldn’t get that part of the interview out of my head. 
> 
> On the couch, JP and Emma read from a radio play written by Dylan Thomas (a Welsh poet) called Under Milk Wood, about sleeping villagers and their dreams. 
> 
> And of course, this piece is inspired by the photographs JP took of Roch Castle, which he shared in his On This Day recollections. 
> 
> Thank you for reading <3


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